It was late, I recall, and I was in a tired and emotional state when I arrived home, tiptoed up the front steps and was attacked by a loop of lights which laced around my neck and resisted all attempts at disentanglement.

If not the lights, then perhaps a tree to decorate the courtyard. Christmas may not seem the same without a tree into which to stumble when attempting to negotiate your way to the bathroom in the depths of the night.

What fond memories I have of digging slivers of shattered glass baubles from the soles of my feet with a needle after cannoning into the tree and crushing hugely expensive decorations underfoot.

Baking is an essential element of the season and while I have never before attempted to bake, perhaps this will be the Year of the Cake. Recipes are being sought and if there are any among you in possession of a Christmas cake recipe which requires an absolute minimum of involvement on the part of the cook, this being myself, I'd love to see it.

Should the cake scheme inexplicably fail, then I have the pudding as fallback. This is the pudding I bought a few years back at the Farmer's Market at New Farm some weeks before Christmas.

"Smashing!" I thought as I stared at its cloth-wrapped plumpness, my mind going back to the puddings at family gatherings in my youth, those cooked by my uncle in a gas-fired copper oven.

I took the pudding home and presented it as a warrior might his prey on returning from a successful hunt. It was greeted with unbridled disinterest and languished in the back of the fridge.

When I moved into a flat with my sister I took the pudding with me, having formed something of a bond with it.

When I moved into my present address, I found my previous housemate had thoughtfully taken the pudding from the fridge and packed it with my possessions - in between the 15-year-old paperbacks and my impressive (and ever growing) collection of wire coat hangers.

I put it in the fridge and there it sits (next to my 5-year-old bottle of gherkins) awaiting its fate - which is to be boiled for six hours.

I dare not tempt fate by leaving the premises with the stove on, so I look forward to an enthralling evening at some time over the next three weeks sitting on a chair in front of the stove watching the pudding cook.

Present buying promises to be particularly onerous this year as I will be forced to rely upon my resources, which means that the week before Christmas promises to be a particularly busy time for me.

How heart-warming it is to be able to anticipate the joys of shouldering and barging my way through massed shoppers, feet bruised by the thundering horde, groin - as has happened - crushed by a woman's swinging handbag and while I'd like to think it was accidental, I harbour serious doubts.

I do queues very badly and all but invariably become involved in ill-tempered exchanges with my fellow queue persons, particularly females who believe their sex permits them to push in front of me.

Sorry, ladies. This is a take-no-prisoners time of the year when all social niceties are suspended in celebration of the joyous season and the weak are trampled underfoot by the strong.

I speak from bitter experience, having been trampled underfoot by several surprisingly strong elderly females over the years, their blue-rinsed perms camouflaging the killer instinct that lurked within.

This also is that time of year when those of less honest persuasions come out to ply their trade, as I discovered one recent Christmas when I queued behind a woman and watched her pay for her purchases with a $50 note.

When she got the change, she insisted it was short because she had handed over $100. The entire till takings then had to be checked and balanced. I was later told this was a common ploy, their hope being that in the crush of Christmas, they'll be taken at their word and given the money without anyone checking the figures.

I stood in line for 20 minutes while the till contents were balanced. The woman didn't get her money and will never know how close she came to being picked up by the purple-faced man behind her and hurled down a lift well.

Parking is the part of the exercise in which I take particular delight, especially the bit which sees you driving to the bottom level of the King George Square car park where you can all but feel the volcanic heat from the earth's core, and watch as the absolute last space is taken by the car in front of you.

Are there people out there who you can pay to do your Christmas shopping and what do they charge?

On a more positive note, this promises to be an excellent year for Christmas carolling. In the past, when the mood has moved me to sing several verses of Silent Night on alighting from a cab outside my house in the dark of night, only the next door neighbours have complained.